Etymology (220)

d. orig. U.S. In pl. (frequently collectively). The principles or moral standards held by a person or social group; the generally accepted or personally held judgement of what is valuable and important in life. Also occasionally in sing.: any one of these principles or standards.

1844 R. W. Emerson in Dial Apr. 496 Trade..tends to convert Government into a bureau of intelligence, an Intelligence-Office, where every man may find what he wishes to buy, and expose what he has to sell, not only produce and manufactures, but art, skill, and intellectual and moral values.

1918 W. I. Thomas & F. ZnanieckiPolish Peasant I. 21 By a social value we understand any datum having an empirical content accessible to the members of some social group and a meaning with regard to which it is or may be an object of activity.

1921 Times Lit. Suppl. 3 Nov. 705/4 The novelist..cannot avoid revealing..his spiritual and philosophical bias, his views of society, of religion, his ‘values’.

1955 Times 10 May 8/3 Restoring to Germany the basic values of democratic civilization.

1970 N. ChomskyAt War with Asia vi. 299 By their willingness to die, the Asian hordes..exploit our basic weakness—our Christian values which make us reluctant to bear the burden of genocide, the final conclusion of our strategic logic.

2009 I. ThomsonDead Yard i. 17 But America ruled now, and with American values had come Burger King outlets and air-conditioned shopping malls.